Week of August 6, 2018

The 2018 CrossFit Games season is in the books and all is right with the world – Mat Fraser and Tia Clair Toomey are repeat champions that dominated the field. Rich Froning’s CrossFit Mayhem team returned to the top of podium. The three champions have a combined 11 CrossFit Games Championships, along with 6 second place finishes. The right people are winning and that’s a good thing.

While the Games are incredible, my only complaint is this year wasn’t terribly dramatic. The winners took the lead on Wednesday and held on to the finish. Fraser had it mathematically in the bag before the final workout started. Toomey left a tiny margin that may have given Laura Horvath a shot a the fittest on earth, but within a minute, it was clear the final workout was going to be a victory lap. Which is fine. But the last 2 years for the women came down to the wire.

The tests have become so hard, and so challenging, only the absolute best can maintain their composure through the weekend and finish strong.

This is the way the sport has gone – it used to be you could replicate the CrossFit Games in your gym the next week. There are a few workouts we can do, but the really cool stuff had interesting equipment, mechanics or a little of everything. Perhaps the coolest workout, at least in my mind, was “Chaos.” The athletes had no idea what they were doing until they got on the field – they didn’t know how many reps they had to do at a given station until the judge told them what had to be done. The whole workout ended with the pull of a “Tumbler” down the field. The Tumbler was basically a huge wheel the athletes had to pull down the field. I guess you could do a sled drag, but the dramatic effect of pulling a huge ball can’t really be denied.

There were a couple of good 21-15-9s we can try – we’ll get the Snatch one in this week.

Monday is Squat, Tuesday is a Handstand Pushup workout, Wednesday we’ll get on the rope, and we will Snatch on Thursday.

Workout of the Day

Front Squat

5 sets of 3, 70%

Overhead Squat

Build to a heavy single in 20 minutes. Each time you drop the bar, perform 3 power cleans and re-rack.